Like many live-service FPS games, The Finals is getting a drip feed of new content and battle passes to keep things fresh. Unlike many of those games, developer Embark Studios isn't committing to any content roadmap to let you know what is coming and when.
That comes from Axios' gaming newsletter, which features some tidbits from creative director Gustav Tilleby and senior environment artist Joakim Stigsson. "We better hold off with that sort of stuff and make promises we can keep," Tilleby says of the studio's rationale for bucking a popular industry trend.
Fresh out of the door, The Finals is currently in Season 1, giving players a battle pass to work through that ends on March 12, 2024. Paying $9.99/€9.99/£7.99 for the reward tracks gives you access to various cosmetics and in-game currency you can spend elsewhere.
What comes with Season 2 remains to be seen. Other popular FPS games like Apex Legends typically offer a new character to a certain cadence or an update to an existing map or a new one. What's in store for The Finals, though, remains to be seen.
Elsewhere in the interview, Embark Studios delves into the destructible nature of the FPS' environments. Wrecking buildings and bridges is a blast, but don't expect to be doing any damage to the ground any time soon.
"We need to kind of draw the line somewhere," Stigsson says. "Otherwise we would have players digging holes."
The Finals is enjoying a fine start to life since launching in full, though the typical obstacles thrown up by FPS games remain. The decision to tweak skill-based matchmaking got the community debating the balance of fairness and fun, whereas a bug stopped the devs from "banning cheaters efficiently." Now that that's been squashed, the team is "re-upping anti-cheat measures."
Embark Studio has also drawn attention from the wider industry over its use of AI tools, which the developer has defended by saying "it allows the team to "work better and faster, and do more with less."
